Half a good home isn’t enough

Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena of the firm Elemental won the Hyatt Foundation’s annual architecture prize, the Pritzker, in January — a big surprise since the prize usually goes to a long-established professional: in 2014 it went to German architect Otto Frei, aged 90. Aravena, 48, won it because his work is meant to eradicate poverty, and to serve the greatest number. The Foundation’s head Thomas Pritzker said at the award ceremony: “His built work gives economic opportunity to the less privileged, mitigates the effects of natural disasters, reduces energy consumption, and provides welcoming public space. [...] he shows how architecture at its best can improve people’s lives”.

Aravena was first noticed in 2004 over his Quinta Monroy social housing project in Iquique, northern Chile. Elemental had been asked to re-house the families of a shantytown, and Aravena had the idea of delivering half of a good home that the occupants could add to themselves, whenever they could afford it. This meant 93 homes could be built on a budget for just 30. The Iquique apartments looked like shoeboxes stood on end, with gaps between the units that could be filled in during any future expansion. The basic unit provided running water and one bedroom. The potential extension area was about the size of a garage at ground level, so that people at the building’s base could increase their living space from 36 to 70 square metres; those in the duplex apartments on the upper two floors could expand from 25 to 72 square metres. The new houses were built on the site of the occupants’ existing homes, so they could stay in the centre of the city (population 220,000) rather than be moved to the suburbs.

Economical use of available means, and the residents’ inventive appropriations of the basic building, make the housing project look picturesque — self-construction, or incremental housing, is seen, rather condescendingly, as a touching but clumsy expression of popular art. The original (...)